The Metaverse Constitution appears, at this point, to be essentially a one person effort, but an eventual wiki is planned. The project is part of Harvard Master of Laws (LL.M.) student Doug McMahon’s “long paper.” There are just a few posts now, but they’re intriguing, particularly McMahon’s “mindmap” of the project.

One odd wrinkle, McMahon says he’s not an active Second Life user (and presumably he doesn’t use any of the other virtual world platforms regularly either). He says he’ll explain why he’s not involved later, and invites readers to convince him that he should be.

The question of why I would seek to draft a constitution for the metaverse, and why I think it might need one, is an obvious one. I genuinely believe that any online world in which users seek some kind of autonomy from the real world cannot function satisfactorily without one. To this you might reply that Second Life, the leading metaverse, seems to be doing just fine. But I would question whether the benevolent dictator model for metaverses is really sustainable. All the power in Second Life is concentrated in the hands of Linden Labs, they are the archetypal judge, jury and executioner with the added twist that they are also the law makers and the executive in the world.

“any online world in which users seek some kind of autonomy from the real world cannot function satisfactorily without one.”

Wouldn’t seeking to operate *with* one constitute some form of secession – if it conflicted in any respect with RL law insofar as the users were concerned? If, at any point, RL law conflicted with SL law, I know where I’d place my bet.

Obviously I’d like to see a RL mechanism that more efficiently enforces rights that are violated in virtual worlds. Perhaps a unified international small claims court or arbitration board vested with the power to regulate and resolve disputes in all virtual worlds. Something like ICANN was for the Internet and domain name disputes.

As to Second Life, it will never happen, For a resident loyal constitution to even begin to be implemented, regardless of its content, it would have to be imposed upon an already oppressed captive community. A closed community such as Second Life, could have a resident approved “charter” perhaps, like a private club, which is all it really is. There is currently and for the foreseeable future, not a a sufficient technological substructure to support any real effort to create and more importantly, implement a consitution. Unless the underlying SL technological structure substantially improves to allow more concurrent users in greater number with better communication abilitites, there will never be a sufficient number of repetitive players across a broad or diverse RL demographic to gain any sense of a consensus about anything. Since only Linden could “allow” any type of constitutional structure to exist within its corporate hierarchy, by definition, the SL “community” will always be an oligarchy comprised of Linden and its chosen few strongest economic partners.

Regarding the much larger metaverse of which SL is just the first ripple, unless there is some kind of International Treaty among RL nations articulating the rights of virtual “citizens” consistent with the underpinnings of their respective cultural heritage and their existing norms harmonizing with existing government regulation (taxes, pornography, gambling, etc.) so there is some balance between the powers of the registrants and the companies that provide these massively multiplayer game clubs in light of real world laws, there is no ability to develop a functional constitution for the “metaverse” of virtual players at large, and I guess that’s really the point.

You just can’t box the metaverse into any set of equally applied rules across the gaming web. The web itself is so dynamically expansive that it easily absorbs all concepts presented and by doing so, by definition and technological structure, avoids any attempt, like the universe, to define or circumscribe its outer bounds. It makes eveyrone feel like a “creator” regardless of talent, and in that process, is rapidly expanding the legions of mediocrity and hence, SL, which allows “creation” limited only by “your imagination”, it has self-defined itself into what it has become, a vat of creative lard with a few shining stars that themselves seem to be quickly streaming to a shooting star’s death.

There is no utopia. A constitution in a virtual world will not create one nor protect or perserve any rights. Rules that protect one subscriber’s interest in a virtual world harm that of another. Any virtual world that tries to be everything to anyone cannot sustain itself. As more of these private virtual clubs are created with better defined themes and rights for their members, the virtual world at large will naturally segment itself because being comprised of real people, each will seek out that virtual world where it finds the most familiarity and acceptance to match the user’s self-image. That segmentation can in part already be seen in SL with various islands, virtual privitization of parcels by banning according to group membership, etc. With “open source”, and the current applications / providers, the pattern is already repeatedly apparent.

There is simply no space for a constitution across all virtual worlds, for the same reason there is no space for a constitution within SL. It has tried to be the end all for everyone. There is simply nothing there worth defining. Existing real world laws in the U.S. are adequate, though maybe not efficient, to take care of real world rights and disputes that translate into real world harm. Any other kind of dispute or “harm”, like virtual harm that has no tie to real world dollars, or virtual rights that exist outside of the real world? Well, they just doesn’t really matter.

A BILL OF RIGHTS???????
FOR THE METAVERSE?????
PERHAPS THE ‘METAVERSE’ MIGHT HAVE A ‘DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE’????? SORT OF LIKE A ‘NEW NATION’ BEING FOUNDED???
ON THIS DAY, I DECLARE THE METAVERSE TO BE INDEPENDENTLY GOVERNED FROM WITHIN, AND NOT GOVERNED BY ANY WORLD GOVERNMENT??? BUT, THE REAL WORLD IS BEING INTRUSIVE???
SHOULD THE METAVERSE BE RULED AS ITS OWN NATION?
SHOULD THE METAVERSE BE RULED OVER BY REAL WORLD GOVERNMENTS???
WHAT REAL WORLD GOVERNMENT(S) HAVE POWERS TO RULE OVER THE METAVERSE??
WHAT IF THE METAVERSE REBELLED, AND OVERTHREW THE POWERS OF REAL WORLD GOVERNMENTS THAT SEEK TO CONTROL THE METAVERSE??(IS THIS POSSIBLE?)
UNLEASHING THE ‘GENIE’ OUT OF THE BOTTLE???(DEMONS??)
HEY, BUT I BELIEVE IN JESUS, AND SO I KNOW THAT JESUS IS RULING.
HAVE PEOPLE REALLY THOUGHT ABOUT SOME OF THE EFFECTS AND AFTER SHOCKS OF UNLEASHING THIS ‘METAVERSE’ PHENOMENON ON THE WORLD??
WHAT HAPPENS IF THE METAVERSE STARTS DELEGATING TO THE REAL WORLD??? AVATARS SEEKING TO RULE??

Ahh, the difficulty with such a constitution that it requires the participation of the virtual world developer which, quite predictably, is usually not forthcoming.

Of course, in an open source model, a developer-based government (and constitution entails government: “constitution” just means how something is constituted: the constitution of the metaverse, literally, just means what sort of thing that the metaverse is. What is being discussed is a metaverse government sponsored by the virtual world developers) does not make any sense in any event.

Wow, I didn’t think I would get such great advice, counsel and criticism with out even trying to advertise the blog! Thanks for the article Ben, however you found the blog. Now to respond to some of the comments:

Tateru Nino: I think you are right in the sense that any constitution that creates legal rights and then conflicts with the real world would start to look on shaky ground. My first thoughts on this is that whilst the constitution within the metaverse (more on what I mean by that later) is a constitutional document it could be treated by RL law as a contract outside of it. In this sense it would mimic the TOS that is currently used. This will make it hard to draft but a conflict of laws type clause would at least give the VW control over some RL laws intrusion.

Marc Woebegone: There is so much excellent stuff in the comment I can only touch on a few points at the moment. Firstly I completely agree that this is not a constitution for SL or indeed perhaps most venture capital funded metaverses. Neither is this a constitution for all metaverses, it would be impossible to write such a document. This leaves the question: what is it for? At the moment I see it as a model that could be adapted to different online world’s as they “constitute” without big business backing. This may seems a while off as yet given the costs of running a metaverse but we are very much in the early days. The constitution itself will be fairly small, enabling clauses will allow further development, it won’t be a monolithic code that defines all law in a world.

How the constitution could ever be adapted and adopted is a very interesting problem. On one view living under a constitution is giving up rights, which a metaverse citizen would often reject. But as I see it at the moment one gives up far more in return for far less under the ToS at Second Life.

I think I should clarify a couple of things from the other comments. I have tried to use SL, which is the closest metaverse to one I would actually like to use, but it has never been compelling enough to make me want to stay. I realise I lose validity by not being an active user but until I find people to interact with in the world (hopefully through this project) I can’t see how being actively involved would make me any better equipped to tackle it. Lastly, I never intend to make any money from this project in anyway.

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About Virtually Blind

From early 2007 to late 2008, Virtually Blind covered legal news, issues, and events that impact virtual worlds, video games, and the 3D internet. The site is no longer updated, though it remains online as a research resource.

Posts and comments on VB were and are not offered as legal advice, and are not confidential attorney-client communication. Posts and comments reflect only the opinion of the author, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of VB's editor, other contributors, sponsors, or any author's employer.